Lights Out

Lights Out was an American old-time radio program devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural. Created by Wyllis Cooper and later taken over by Arch Oboler, versions of the show aired on different networks at various times from January 3, 1934 to the summer of 1947.

Lights Out was one of the earliest radio horror programs, predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum Mysteries. The series eventually made the transition to television, with a live 1949-1952 program that was sponsored by Admiral and hosted by Frank Gallop.

The Stars

While Lights Out did not have any regular stars, it featured a rotating cast of talented actors who brought the show’s chilling tales to life.

Some of the notable performers who appeared on the program included Sidney Ellstrom, Art Jacobson, Don Briggs, Bernardine Flynn, Betty Lou Gerson, and Betty Winkler during the Wyllis Cooper era.

When Arch Oboler took over as writer and director, he was able to attract high-profile guest stars such as Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis to appear in his adaptations of classic horror stories and his own original scripts.

Key Dates

• Debut: The first series of Lights Out shows, each 15 minutes long, debuted on a local NBC station, WENR, at midnight on Wednesdays starting in January 1934.Expansion: By April 1934, the series had proven successful enough to expand to a half-hour format. It was then picked up by NBC and broadcast nationally, usually in the late-night hours on Wednesdays. Hiatus and Return: In January 1935, the show was temporarily discontinued to ease Cooper’s workload, but it was brought back by popular demand a few weeks later.
• Transition to Arch Oboler: Wyllis Cooper left the program in June 1936, and Arch Oboler took over as the new writer and director.
• Cancellation and Revivals: Lights Out was canceled in 1939, but Oboler revived the series for a year on CBS in 1942-1943. There were also brief summer revivals of the show in 1945, 1946, and 1947 using scripts from the Cooper era.
• Television Adaptation: In 1946, NBC Television brought Lights Out to television in a series of four live specials, and then again as a regular series that ran from 1949 to 1952.

Other Information

Lights Out was known for its grisly, tongue-in-cheek horror stories under Wyllis Cooper’s leadership, with characters being buried alive, eaten, skinned, or vaporized in gruesome ways. When Arch Oboler took over, he continued the show’s focus on the macabre but also incorporated more social and political themes that reflected his antifascist liberal views.

The series benefited tremendously from the creative talent pool in Chicago, which was a major center of radio production in the 1930s. The sound effects technicians frequently had to experiment to achieve the desired unsettling noises, with Cooper once having them build a gallows and personally drop through the trap to get the right effect.

While many of Cooper’s original scripts were lost over time, a few survive that showcase his pioneering use of stream-of-consciousness narration and first-person perspectives, techniques that would later be adopted by other radio dramatists. Oboler’s scripts, on the other hand, were more widely preserved, and many episodes from his 1942-1943 CBS revival are available today.

The enduring popularity of Lights Out is evidenced by comedian Bill Cosby’s famous standup routine about being terrified as a child by the “Chicken Heart” episode, which Oboler had recreated for a 1962 spoken-word album.

The series’ influence can also be seen in the similarities between an Oboler story about a mysterious truck driver and Steven Spielberg’s TV movie Duel.